


Eden

by Miss_Peletier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7359412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Peletier/pseuds/Miss_Peletier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus takes off into the woods suddenly one day, leaving little in the way of an explanation for his departure. There’s a storm coming and Abby, concerned for his well-being, resolves to find him before it hits. Set post-S3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eden

          “Monty,” Abby said, approaching the boy as he stood on the outskirts of Arkadia’s perimeter. “Have you seen Marcus?”

          “I saw him a few hours ago,” he said, staring into the distance toward something she couldn’t quite distinguish in the rapidly thickening fog. “He left with a shovel and a tray and said he’d be back soon. He also said he’d be right outside the gate.” He paused, turning to look her in the eyes. “Do you want Bellamy and I to go after him? We could take a rover, but that might be overkill.”

          Abby sighed. She hadn’t seen Marcus since she’d started her shift in Medical and wished he would have at  _least_  let her know what he was doing. Dark clouds had been hovering over Arkadia for the better part of the day, threatening a torrential downpour, and if he wasn’t careful he’d be caught in the rain.

          If he came down with a cold because of his own carelessness…well, she’d take pity on him anyway, despite the substantial part of her that would yearn to give him a stern lecture.

         Her heart would never harden where Marcus Kane was concerned.

         “No,” she said, and Monty gave a small scowl. Clearly, that wasn’t the answer he had expected. “I’ll find him.”

         “Are you sure?” he asked, confusion turning into concern. “The storm isn’t going to hold off for much longer.”

         “I’m sure,” she responded, taking off into the woods.  _What the hell did he need a shovel for?_  “I’ll be back soon.”

                                                       *********

           She didn’t notice Marcus until she nearly tripped over him, fog swirling over his crouched form against a forest backlit only by the dimming twilight. It was eerily quiet, she thought: the birds had fallen silent, the grass was an unhealthy brown, the air didn’t smell sweet as it once had. Everything seemed frozen, stale, stagnant, and unease gnawed at the base of her neck, standing the small hairs there to attention. They weren’t in any danger, not here, but something seemed…off.

          “Marcus?” she said, relieved, still biting back confusion and an unshakable sense of fear. “It’s going to rain. We need to get home before the storm starts.”

          Then the mist parted enough for her to see his shoulders shake with silent sobs, and her heart snapped like the twigs underneath her feet.

          _I thought you were feeling better. You told me you were feeling better._

          It had been several weeks since everything in the City of Light, since the mess with ALIE and the chaos she’d caused. They were both fractured, broken, but they had each other. When one of them shattered, the other person glued them back together. Days came and went, giving hope and taking it away, but they endured. They always endured.

         His nightmares had been less frequent in the past few days. When she asked him about it, asked if he was feeling better, he told her he was. Had that been a lie?

         She stepped toward him and knelt down, folding him into her arms as naturally as she had that fateful day in Polis.

         “I failed her,” she heard him whisper into her shoulder as she trailed her fingers up and down his back, trying desperately to quell his desolate sobs, and it became apparent his sadness wasn’t because of guilt over what happened during his time in the City of Light. This was a new pain, a new sadness, a new torment.

          At first the dots didn’t connect – who was ‘she?’ – and her eyebrows drew together, an outward expression of her puzzlement. ‘She’ could have been a few different people, realistically: Clarke, Octavia, Harper…but he had no reason to feel responsible for what had happened to them. Of course, Marcus being Marcus, he  _would_.

          Desperately trying to glue a sentence together in her head that would portray both her confusion and sympathy, that would both inform her and comfort him, Abby opened her eyes.

         The answer was right in front of her, waiting in the mist.

         A small tree, trunk twisted as it reached for the sun from its place on the forest floor, was the response to her inquiry.  _The Eden Tree_ , she remembered as her fingers trailed over the smooth fabric of Marcus’ jacket, as they slipped and slid when the fog coated the material with droplets of water.

         She remembered how he’d held the tree on their descent into the atmosphere, how he’d clutched it to his chest as if Theolonius himself had appointed him its protector. Although, in this case, he fulfilled a duty far more precious than that of a Councilor: he fulfilled the duty of a son.

         Of his mother’s final wish.

         She’d been standing across the room that day, but she’d still heard Vera Kane’s request.

         _Could you take the tree down for me?_

         And he did. Of course he did. Marcus Kane would do anything for the people he loved, and although he hadn’t shown it in space he loved his mother most of all.

         She had no idea he’d even planted it. When, she wondered, had he had time? It wasn’t a shock that he’d given it a place of honor close to camp: she knew he’d probably gone to check on it when he was on guard duty, made sure it was alive and well. It had likely become something of a constant to him – no matter how horrible things were inside the walls of Arkadia, he could always count on the little Eden Tree to be there in the dirt, waiting for him in the woods.

        And now, with the leaves fallen, the branches lifeless and strangled, that constant had been eliminated. 

       There was nothing he could have done, no protection he could have offered against the malicious radiation that had choked the life from his mother’s little tree. ALIE was many things – manipulative, cold, calculating – but she hadn’t lied. Her programming hadn’t allowed for that.

       With a rush of grief, she realized the Eden Tree was the first casualty in their war against a planet determined to wipe them out, a life too small and frail to survive in a radiation-soaked world.

       “Marcus,” she whispered, sliding her hand upward to stroke the back of his neck. Despite the night’s icy ambience and the rumblings of ever-closer thunder, he was burning up. “Marcus, look at me.”

        He readjusted in her arms, leaning away from her grasp until he could stare into her eyes. She took him in, observed the heartbreak etched in every centimeter of his expression. Abby wasn’t a religious woman, not the way Vera and her family had been, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit of anger mixed with her sorrow.  _After everything he’s been through, he doesn’t deserve this, too._

       “You didn’t fail her,” she said firmly. “You did exactly what she asked you to do. She’d be happy the tree had a place on the ground.”

         He shook his head quickly, insistently, and for a moment she worried the rapid motion was going to make him sick. Tears hadn’t stopped following a well-worn path from his eyes down his cheeks and into his beard, and she reached forward to wipe a few from his skin before they could disappear there.

        “I tried to keep it alive,” he said, voice shaking. “I came out here every day until I left Arkadia. If I had known…”

         Abby nodded, thumb stroking the nape of his neck where beads of sweat had formed. A byproduct of his anguish.  _How long has he been crying?_

        “Vera would be proud,” Abby said, trying to coax him out of his desolation as she tried the same statement with different words. “She wanted you to take the tree to the ground, and you did. You can’t control the climate, or the radiation. You did everything you could, Marcus.”

        Abby’s eyes darted from the tree to the man she loved. Despite her sentiment she found herself willing it to come back to life, willing the shriveled leaves to turn green again and reattach themselves to the lifeless branches. She was no expert on trees – Earth Skills had never been her favorite class, and this hadn’t been the sort of thing they learned – but she knew enough to conclude it was impossible.

       The Eden Tree was gone, and the realization broke her heart as much as it broke his.

        Marcus sighed, giving a sniffle as he wiped a tear away with his calloused hands. A lock of hair had fallen into his eyes and she reached forward to brush it to the side.

       He smiled a shaky smile at the contact, a smile that dissipated as soon as it crossed his lips. Although he kept his eyes on her his gaze turned distant, and she knew his mind had turned to a time long past.

      “I remember when I was the Tender of the Tree, back on the Ark. I couldn’t have been older than seven or eight, and I was late to one of our meetings – the only time I was ever running late, and I now don’t remember why. I think I got caught up in a book I was reading. But I had the tree with me, and I was running down the corridor to get to the room where she held the ceremony. I was almost there when I tripped.”

        He paused for a moment, gave a joyless laugh. Abby kept her hands trained on his shoulders and her gaze locked on his, enraptured by his tale. He didn’t talk about his childhood or their time on the Ark often, and neither did she. They both felt those memories belonged to a different time and place, to ghosts of the people they were now.

        But some memories were worth holding onto, some things were worth remembering. Jake’s wedding ring still hung around her neck, after all, and she realized suddenly that this tree had acted similarly to that metallic band. A link to a time long past, to a person gone but never forgotten. A woman still truly, completely loved, even if it had been almost a year since her son had seen her smile.

         “I landed face-first on the floor,” Marcus continued, voice wavering slightly as his eyes glassed over with tears not yet fallen. “I lost the tree in mid-fall, and it landed on its side a few feet away. There was soil everywhere. It was on the floor, in my hair, all over my clothes. It was obvious what had happened. I heard the crunch, a snap, and feared the worst. I was mortified…I wanted to stay on that floor and never move again.”

         Abby smiled, picturing the tall, gangly boy she’d once known sprawled out on the Ark’s concrete corridors. It wasn’t far-fetched, the idea that the younger version of the man in front of her would have nearly expired of an almost toxic combination: embarrassment and shame.

          It would have been funny if it weren’t so tragic.

          “I didn’t see my mother approach me, never heard her voice, but the next thing I knew she was helping me to my feet, brushing the soil from my clothes and asking me if I was all right. She didn’t even look at the tree until after she knew I was okay. Until after she’d given me a hug.”

         He didn’t explain the significance behind the memory. It was there, in Vera’s embrace: as much as she cared about the Eden Tree, she cared more about her son.

        And at the moment, her son was convinced he’d failed her.

        “She should have been here,” he whispered in a choked sob, speaking more to himself than to Abby. “Before the radiation, before the Mount Weather and the City of Light. When everything was green and peaceful. She would have loved the trees, the sky.” He sighed, running a hand through his mussed hair. “She deserved to see this.”

        “She did,” Abby agreed after a moment of silence, remembering Vera Kane’s bright smile, her willingness to extend kindness to any stranger in need. “She would have loved it.”

         Marcus leaned forward again, and Abby held him close. Harsh rolls of thunder sounded, nearly stealing the words from her companion’s mouth before they reached her ears.

        “I wasn’t the son I should have been,” he said. “She deserved better than a child who lied to her right before…” he trailed off, and she felt a familiar ache in her chest. That regret, that gale-force rage directed inward…she’d felt it, too. Marcus Kane wasn’t the only one with regrets, with pages of the past that he wished could be torn out and rewritten.

       “She loved you,” Abby whispered, her fingers winding their way through his damp hair. “She loved you more than anything else. And she forgave you. That’s what mothers do, Marcus. They love, and they forgive. No matter what, they forgive.”

        She eased him away from her just enough to look in his eyes, to trail one hand down the side of his face and halted its path when it reached his jawline.

        “Vera would be proud of the man you are today,” she said sternly, hoping against all hope that her words were getting through to the man in front of her, silently pleading with him to understand the validity of her claims. Every time a tear fell from his eyes, a vise tightened around her heart. His pain was her pain, and seeing him like this…it was almost too much for her to handle. 

        And she knew it was true. Vera would have been proud of her son, of the peace he stood for and the kind, noble leader he’d become. Marcus Kane of the ground was a very different man than the Marcus Kane of the Ark. He was softer, sweeter, empathetic, loving.

       Just like his mother.

      “But she always loved you,” Abby said. “On the Ark, after the Culling, she loved you. The Eden Tree wouldn’t have changed that, if she was here. Nothing could.”

       They were quiet for a few moments, allowing the thunder to fill in the gaps in their conversation. Finally, Marcus regained something resembling his normal tone, if slightly dulled.

        “Thank you, Abby,” he said, reaching upward to guide both of her hands into his own. She smiled, fighting her own tears. No words needed to be spoken.

         Slowly, she rose to her feet and extended a hand to him. He accepted it and stood, but neither of them let go. They’d let go of each other too many times already, and with an expiration date on their days they couldn’t afford to lose even the most minute of contacts. Every second, every touch, every shared look: it all counted.

        “I don’t want to leave it like this,” he said, staring down at the broken little tree. “It doesn’t seem dignified.”

        For a heartbeat Abby didn’t know what to say – what alternatives did they have? – and then she noticed the shovel. The shovel Bellamy had told her he left camp with, sitting next to the makeshift pot he’d never use. Not now.

       “We could bury it,” she suggested, and she felt Marcus’ still-trembling hand tighten in hers. “If you think that’s what Vera would have wanted.”

       Wordlessly, he picked up the shovel and began to dig.

       Abby tore up the soil around the tree’s roots, eventually freeing it from its place in the earth. She handed it to him, noting how tiny it looked in his hands. A tiny thing of immeasurable value.

       He placed it in the ground, they replaced the soil together, and where the Eden Tree had once stood there was now only brown earth.

       “In peace, may you leave this shore,” he whispered, and Abby felt wetness sliding down her cheeks that had nothing to do with the impending downpour. “In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again.”

       Marcus finished the blessing with a quiet sob, placing his hand on the ground where the tree found its eternal resting place.

       Then the clouds opened and rain poured from the skies, as Abby Griffin enclosed Marcus Kane tightly in her arms.

_May we meet again._

       Somewhere across the heavens, nestled safely inside the deepest reaches of sky and space, Vera Kane smiled.


End file.
